UPDATE: Ancient Egypt and Outer Space... is ancient Egypt taking over the universe?

 FURTHER UPDATE

It continues - the curious 'ancient Egyptianization' of outer space...

"Incredible Footage of OSIRIS-REx Being Launched Towards an Asteroid

NASA’s spacecraft will intercept Bennu, a small butpotentially hazardous near-Earth object..." (Observer)

UPDATE

The association continues to build... according to this recent item "Bennu... Formerly known as 1999 RQ36, the space rock was chosen by process of elimination as the destination for the UA-led OSIRIS-REx mission, which will pick up a sample of its regolith and return it to Earth for analysis. Launch is little more than two months away."

We are not the only ones to fuse ancient Egypt and outer space. 

The ancient Egyptians' built creation stories out of stellar events. 
  
The sacred Benben stone, centre-piece of the temple of Ra in Heliopolis, was in all likelihood a conical meteorite that fell to earth in Egypt, its pyramidion shape finding echoes in obelisks and in pyramids themselves. 

The ancient Egyptians prized 'iron of the sky', meteoric iron used in the making of jewellery beads, ceremonial daggers (Tutankhamun's treasure provides a famous example of this) and in the sacred adze used in the opening of the mouth ceremony.

OSIRIS-Rex, Philae and Rosetta are just two more examples, and names, in a long comet’s tail of associations between outer space and ancient Egypt.*

Think of the asteroid Apophis (the great Egyptian serpent god of outer darkness) that threw a scare into us when it was feared it might strike earth.

Think of the canonical use of sarcophagus-like sleep capsules used by distant travellers in science fiction movies, with 'Interstellar' being the latest example.

Like astronauts, mummies are bound up in elaborate white suits with masks for their journey through eternity.

Consider the Great Pyramid as the largest ever gantry for a space shot to put the pharaoh's soul into space and orbit among the imperishable circumpolar stars.

In fact you might say that ancient Egypt devised the first ‘space ship’ – a pharaoh’s barque that traveled through the heavens like the sun in a journey of millions of years.

The first 'space ship'- from ancient Egypt?

*(In one of my fictional adventure mysteries, 'THE RA VIRUS'', I build on this tradition where a meteorite bearing a deadly pathogen is suspected of being the cause of an 'Eleventh Plague of Egypt')

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